Book contents
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- Preface
- Glossary
- 1 Arab courts in comparative perspective
- 2 The creation and operation of the modern Egyptian legal system, 1876–1937
- 3 Egyptian courts., 1937–1971: centralization, authoritarianism, and socialism
- 4 Egyptian courts, 1971–1996: the reemergence of liberal legality
- 5 Legal reform in the Arab states of the Gulf
- 6 The legal system and the rule of law in Kuwait and Qatar
- 7 Popular uses of the courts
- 8 Business and the courts
- Conclusion
- Bibliography
- Index
7 - Popular uses of the courts
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 23 October 2009
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- Preface
- Glossary
- 1 Arab courts in comparative perspective
- 2 The creation and operation of the modern Egyptian legal system, 1876–1937
- 3 Egyptian courts., 1937–1971: centralization, authoritarianism, and socialism
- 4 Egyptian courts, 1971–1996: the reemergence of liberal legality
- 5 Legal reform in the Arab states of the Gulf
- 6 The legal system and the rule of law in Kuwait and Qatar
- 7 Popular uses of the courts
- 8 Business and the courts
- Conclusion
- Bibliography
- Index
Summary
The little plaintiff or defendant, who was promised a new rocking-horse when Jarndyce and Jarndyce should be settled, has grown up, possessed himself of a real horse, and trotted away into the other world. Fair wards of court have faded into mothers and grandmothers; a long procession of Chancellors has come in and gone out; the legion of bills in the suit have been transformed into mere bills of mortality; there are not three Jarndyces left upon the earth perhaps, since old Tom Jarndyce in despair blew his brains out at a coffee-house in Chancery Lane; but Jarndyce and Jarndyce still drags its dreary length before the Court, perennially hopeless.
Charles Dickens, Bleak HouseIn 1987, Musa Sabri, a prominent Egyptian journalist was angered by an article mentioning him in the opposition newspaper al-Wafd. He filed a libel suit against the paper's editor, Mustafa Shardi, and the leader of the Wafd party, Fu'ad Siraj al-Din, the two officials held responsible under the press law for the contents of the paper. It took seven years before Sabri's suit was rejected by the Mahkamat al-Naqd which ruled that the responsibility mentioned in the press law was undefined. Long before this the plaintiff and one of the two defendants had died, yet the case continued on, possessed of its own life, until the highest court in the country had ruled.
In 1961, a resident of Cairo learned from his father that the family was a beneficiary of a waqf (endowment) consisting of some urban real estate valued at eight million dollars and decided to go to the Ministry of Awqaf to have it divided among the many heirs.
- Type
- Chapter
- Information
- The Rule of Law in the Arab WorldCourts in Egypt and the Gulf, pp. 187 - 220Publisher: Cambridge University PressPrint publication year: 1997